Oh okay! Pretty sure the spoiler guy in Broken Hills at the airport said charter as well.

I have been thinking about this. There is a flight out of Broken Hill to Adeladie at approx 630pm with a makeable connection from Adelaide to Sydney late night. If those production people were not needed in Sydney at the train station, then they could connect with JL772 to Narita on the morning of Nov24 at about 920am. I would think this group would be production people that supervise setting up the detour-route markers. As soon as they got their assignments cleaned up and any gear stored and out to the airport. Also I would think the people in charge of doing the post leg confessionals would have plenty of time to complete their task and catch the 630 flight. I would think the only production people left in Broken Hill would be the production assts that were assigned to herding around the racers and they would ride the train too. I would think that any production personal that were going to take care of the Pit Stop release at the Sydney train station would just ride the train, but, as mentioned above, they could have flown through Adelaide.

I would think that people like BVM, etc would have made the 125pm flight with Phil to get to Japan with a 24 hour head start to make sure the set ups, for the Japan leg, were complete.

Since it appears the tasks in Japan cover a pretty fair amount of distance, I would think that Phil would hit the ground running and do his standups while the teams are in Sydney waiting for their flights. That way Phil could then get a good nights rest at a hotel fairly close to the Japanese Pit Stop and wouldnt really have to leave till notified of teams approaching the Pit Stop. After the last team checks in, he could head to Narita for flights to Kunming or Lijiang if he is not needed for any standups in Kunming. If time is availabe between flights, he could possiblily do some of his Kunming standups before even going to Lijiang to do his standups there.

Following the sighting by Tombc52, the analysis by Apskip and DrRox, and a trip I just took to both Liechtenstein and Zermatt, here's the itinerary I'm confident LaKisha/Jennifer were on the afternoon of 7 Dec:IR 1776 from Sargans to Zurich, 1239-1348IC 826 from Zurich to Visp, 1402-1602R 249 from Visp to Zermatt, 1625-1734

Sargans is one of the two Swiss Rail stations that serve Liechtenstein, but the other one, Buchs, would not involve the sisters travelling on the Chur-Zurich train on which they were sighted.

If there was a normal Pit Stop (as opposed to a rolling Pit Stop or a TBC) in Vienna, teams would necessarily have flown to get to Liechtenstein. Herbert/Nathaniel were seen racing in Vienna at 11.30am on 6 Dec. If there is a normal Pit Stop that lasts 12h or more, they will not be able to make the last train to Feldkirch (Austrian jump-off point to Liechtenstein) at 11.56pm. The first train option for the next day is a direct, from 7.14am to 1.49pm. However, this is incongruent with the sisters leaving Liechtenstein more than an hour before, before 12.39pm. Teams in this scenario therefore must have flown between Vienna and Liechtenstein.

The first possible itinerary is:AA 8094 from Vienna to Zurich Airport, 0736-0846IC 716 from Zurich Airport to Zurich, 0913-0923IC 565 from Zurich to Sargans, 0937-1032

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You are assuming that LaKisha and Jen had complete information and took the most efficient route. since I believe that the Buchs route must be essentially the same the way through Zurich, I believe that if they did what the eyewitness reported (and I am not disputing that). My analysis assumed a start from Feldkirch at 1130am has them arriving Zermatt based on this:POSTAL BUS arrives Buchs 1200IC train departs Buchs 1212train arrives Zermatt 1734

DrRox...sorry I am swamped at work and have not been able to search for the BHills email. But I THINK there was info that "production" including Phil was flying out that afternoon (while the teams were waitng for the train} and IIRC it was in two flights.

Will see what I can find but prob not until Thurs.

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DrRox...sorry I am swamped at work and have not been able to search for the BHills email. But I THINK there was info that "production" including Phil was flying out that afternoon (while the teams were waitng for the train} and IIRC it was in two flights.

Will see what I can find but prob not until Thurs.

Dont worry Peach. I think the two flights are worked out. I do not think they were charters. There are no strange flights in the system, like the two flights getting to Broken Hill. They can actually use scheduled flights to get back to Sydney.

First one is ZL863 BHQ to SYD @ 125 pm arriving in Sydney at about 6 pm. This would have Phil and his personal crew, BVM and other top dogs and probably the task supervisors......They arrive in Sydney in plenty of time to catch QF21 at 1000 pm to Narita. Gives them 24 hours lead time to do standups and make sure the tasks are set up correctly. This flight time really matches the midday/early afternoon sun in Phil's diary video.

Second one is ZL4883 BHQ to ADL @ 605pm, then XM7053 ADL to SYD @ 815pm. They can then catch JL772 to Narita@ 915am, arrving @ 456pm. I would suspect the lower level production crew on this one. For instance, the guys that film the confessionals and any other crew that would not be needed for the Pit Stop release @ the train station in Sydney.

Train to Sydney @ 630 pm. Race teams and their camera/soundman, 2 or 3 production assts to keep the racers corraled and maybe a couple of battery techs to make sure the batteries are all charged. This could also be done while teams are hanging out all afternoon at that cafe.

So looks good to match your info on "two flights." Just not charters, but regularly scheduled flights.

The Hong Kong connection really meshes with the spoiler girl that said she was on a flight to Bali with connection in Hong Kong. She said she interacted with team(s) from Amazing Race. Plus the 3 hours in Hong Kong would certainly give them time to research flights and trains to Lijiang. I dont know if they all took taxis from the airport to the train station. Jenn and Kisha said they ran in the extra videos. They said there werent enough taxis at the airport

I agree that the photographic evidence of the teams just after their arrival at connecting point HKG airport is conclusive, but the question is why World Race Productions chose to go that way for all teams. Here are 3 superior connections:

Each of those was scheduled to arrive one hour to 1.75 hours before HX247. Why? The only reasons I can think of are Bunching (not a real issue because the shuttle bus in Lijiang was going to force this) and lack of seat availability.

Perhaps WRP was cleared only to get their cameras through Kunming Airport, and hence wanted to avoid going through Chinese customs at Shanghai, Chongqing, etc? Hong Kong and Seoul are probably the two airports outside of SE Asia and China that serve Kunming.

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I find it useful to maintain a running log of the actual transportation used by the teams, with all the unused options eliminated and the delays incorporated:

Leg 1 11/20 depart LAX for SYDQF12 departed at 2326, but encountered a major problem en route, diverted to Honolulu to land there at 0159 on 10/21 and subsequently in Sydney at 0959 (runway but 1047am leaving airport) 10/22.

QF108 departed at 2348 and arrived 0956 on 11/22

Leg 2 SYD BHQ11/23 ZL9578 0605 0755ZL9596 0630 082

Leg 3 in order to get on the Indian Pacific Railroad, teams must be ready to depart Broken Hill by 1830 on 11/23This train arrives in Sydney at 1015 on 10/24Teams must transfer to SYD airport and fly to Tokyo. Choices departing 10/24 and arriving 10/25 are:

I want to take up the question of the penalty that Kent and Vyxsin received for missing the "required" flight from Tokyo Narita to Kunming. All the grousing by other teams that they should have been penalized more heavily is ridiculous in my opinion. Kent and Vyxsin suffered by taking a flight almost 6 hours after the other teams and arriving in Kunming about 7 hours after the other teams. They then had to wait 6 hours for the 7am flight to Lijiang. The thing that "saved" them was the Hours of Operation waiting for the Shuttle bus in Lijiang, which caused the other teams to wait until 8am before going up to the yak ROADBLOCK. Kent and Vyxsin narrowed their deficit to about 30 minutes and probably finished that leg about 30 minutes behind. The next leg started with a Bunching delay since there was only one logical flight nonstop to Kolkata.

Hours of Operation and Bunching delays are designed by World Race Productions to equalize all the teams. Kent and Vyxsin still had to face a unique 30 minute penalty, which if the dinosaur ROADBLOCK had been easier could have caused their elimination.

I do not want to hear from other teams about how Kent and Vyxsin should have gotten a 24 hour penalty. There was nothing special about the flight combination that the other 8 teams took. It was one of several combinations which could have gotten teams to Kunming or even to Lijiang. It just happened to be the one, probably for capacity reasons having at least 36 available seats on both flights, for which World Race Productions made the reservations for the teams plus cameramen and soundmen.

Other teams wanted a stiffer penalty for them because that 6 to 7 hour deficit was wiped out when every team got on the same train back to Kunming. The fact that Kynt and Vyxsin survived was luck on their part. Very similar to the situation with the cowboys in leg one except that they did not do anything worth being penalized for.

Perhaps if the goths had been penalized more heavily they would have been eliminated at the PitStop in Kunming, where the penalty was assessed. If you put yourself in the place of other teams you could understand why they feel that it is unfair that Kynt and Vyxsin wandered all over central Japan for hours and are still on equal footing with the other remaining teams.

That's not their fault though, that was the way the leg was designed, they let the bunching be too long. And the 30 minute penalty for taking a different flight was standard.

And remember that we have an edited out task here...a required travel agent stop to get the info for the flight. If that task had not been completed I expect we would have seen an additional penalty as well, but since everyone must have done it, it didn't matter, so we didn't get to see it.

If I were another team, yes, I might have been disappointed too. But it was how the leg was designed and not the Goths that was the problem.

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I agree, it's not their fault that they were not eliminated. It's just a part of the crazy twists this year. The other teams do have an understandable reason to be frustrated, but at the way the game works not Kynt and Vyxsin. (Unless they like Ron are getting irritated at them for their repetitive lying.)

I want to take up the question of the penalty that Kent and Vyxsin received for missing the "required" flight from Tokyo Narita to Kunming. All the grousing by other teams that they should have been penalized more heavily is ridiculous in my opinion. Kent and Vyxsin suffered by taking a flight almost 6 hours after the other teams and arriving in Kunming about 7 hours after the other teams. They then had to wait 6 hours for the 7am flight to Lijiang. The thing that "saved" them was the Hours of Operation waiting for the Shuttle bus in Lijiang, which caused the other teams to wait until 8am before going up to the yak ROADBLOCK. Kent and Vyxsin narrowed their deficit to about 30 minutes and probably finished that leg about 30 minutes behind. The next leg started with a Bunching delay since there was only one logical flight nonstop to Kolkata.

Hours of Operation and Bunching delays are designed by World Race Productions to equalize all the teams. Kent and Vyxsin still had to face a unique 30 minute penalty, which if the dinosaur ROADBLOCK had been easier could have caused their elimination.

I do not want to hear from other teams about how Kent and Vyxsin should have gotten a 24 hour penalty. There was nothing special about the flight combination that the other 8 teams took. It was one of several combinations which could have gotten teams to Kunming or even to Lijiang. It just happened to be the one, probably for capacity reasons having at least 36 available seats on both flights, for which World Race Productions made the reservations for the teams plus cameramen and soundmen.

I agree that in this particular case the punishment fits the crime - mostly because K&V did not obtain any advantage by taking an unauthorized flight.

I do worry about the precedence it set though. Lets say that you are one of the other teams that arrived at the airport hours before the assigned flight left. If I knew that I would only receive a 30 minute penalty for taking an unauthorized flight, I would definitely try to get on an earlier flight if it gave me an advantage greater than 30 minutes.Maybe, in future, the Route Info clues that designate that a specific flight must be used should say something to the effect of "If you miss the designated flight, you may take a later, less advantageous flight and incur a 30 minute penalty.".

It is and that's what was applied, because Kent and Vyxsin certainly had no advantage from taking any later flights. They only had a serious deficit. I think the remarks of the other teams, particularly Jaime and Cara and Margie and Luke who were their chief supporters, should be disregarded as sour grapes.